CollarMe

My name is Clay Masterson, I'm twenty-eight, and three years ago I accidentally found out something about myself at a tipsy costume party. Well, "accidentally" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Let me back up.

It was October, my first real job out of college, and the company threw a Halloween thing in the break room. Everybody drank too much boxed wine and somebody's cousin brought a karaoke machine. I was still fully in the closet back then, not just about guys but about... everything else too. The stuff I didn't even have words for yet.

Lacey from accounting dared me. That's literally how it started, a dare from a woman I barely knew. "Clay, you're the skinniest guy in this office, go grab something from the wardrobe rack, nobody's using it." The warehouse had a costume rack because we did trade show displays, and there was a whole section of leftovers from old shoots. Skirts, dresses, wigs, the works.

"You dare me?" I said, already two wines in.

"I dare you. Plaid skirt. Do it."

So I did it, laughing the whole way, and I put it on in the supply closet and came out and everyone hooted and someone took a photo that got deleted, thank god. And then Lacey got pulled into some meeting call and drifted off, and the party kept going, and I just... didn't take the skirt off. I wandered down to the quiet end of the hallway where there's that big full-length mirror by the fire extinguisher, the one nobody ever looks at, and I stood in front of it.

Oh. Oh wow. That's the moment, right? The mirror moment. I'd read about it in a hundred forum posts and thought those people were being dramatic. Then it happened to me and I just stood there shaking, holding my wine glass, looking at a person who was finally, finally dressed right. The skirt was too big and my work shirt was wrong and I needed a razor and yet. That person in the mirror was me. I'd never seen myself before that night. I'm not being poetic, it genuinely felt like that.

Lacey found me there twenty minutes later, still in the skirt, nowhere near the party. She looked at me, then at the mirror, and she didn't laugh.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine, this is just..." I fumbled with the hem. "It's a good costume, right?"

"Clay. Is that the only reason you're wearing it?"

And I could have lied. I opened my mouth to lie. And what came out instead was, "No!"

She nodded slowly, like I'd told her my favorite pizza topping. "Cool. It suits you. Take it home, nobody will miss it." And she walked off to answer her phone. That was it! No speech, no drama. I took the skirt home. I wore it until two in the morning in my apartment with the lights off, terrified and happier than I'd ever been.

***

Present day. My apartment, Saturday morning, which means the ritual.

First, the shave. Everything shaved, twice over, because I like the feeling and I've stopped pretending it's for anyone else. Then the shower, the lotion, the whole routine, forty minutes easy. Then I lock the bedroom door. Yes, I live alone. Yes, I still lock the door. Habit, comfort, call it what you want, it's my ritual and it works.

Then the trying on. That Saturday it was a white blouse I'd ordered online in a size that almost fits, and a pleated gray skirt that actually does fit because I measured like an engineer, which I am. Software developer, mostly work from home, no dress code, which is both a blessing and a trap because it means I never have a reason to stop.

I stood in front of my closet mirror and twirled once. The skirt flared. I grinned like an idiot.

On the nightstand sat my stack of romance novels, all borrowed from Jules, my neighbor, who reads about a dozen a month. And okay, I should say this plainly because it matters later: I picked them because of the covers. Dressed-up men on the covers, men in waistcoats and cravats and once a full embroidered coat with heels, and every time I see one I think, that's the look, that's the version of the mirror person I want. Jules thinks it's hilarious that I "read" books by staring at the cover. She doesn't know how right she is about why.

Dev knows, by the way. Dev is my best friend and also my coworker, twenty-six, and I came out to him last year over tacos and he said, "Oh thank god, I've been dying to talk about nails with somebody." So I have one person. It's not nothing. But one person who knows is still a pretty lonely number when you're twenty-eight and the mirror person is getting louder every month.

***

Monday. After hours at the warehouse, which I do maybe once a month, the inventory audit for the display stock. It's quiet work and I like the quiet. Around seven the building was empty except for the hum of the freezers.

Here's where it goes wrong. Or right. Honestly the jury is still out.

There's a mirror in the stockroom, a leftover prop from a furniture shoot, leaning against the shelving. And there's a box of sample apparel near it, and in that box, folded on top, a black sequined top. Sleeveless, small, shiny. I should have just logged it. Location, condition, next. Instead I picked it up.

And I looked around. Nobody. And I held it up against my chest.

In the mirror. Sequins catching the fluorescent light against my plain gray work polo. And I was so gone, so deep in the mirror moment, that I didn't hear the door.

"Clay?"

I have never in my life turned around that fast. The top ended up pressed against my chest like evidence, which, fair, it was. Lin stood in the doorway with a clipboard. Lin from the design team, thirty or so, tattoos on both forearms, the kind of person who never looks rattled. She looked at me. She looked at the top. She looked at me again.

My whole brain was screaming abandon ship, make a joke, say you were checking the reflective material for quality. And then she tilted her head and said, in the most ordinary voice in the world:

"Is that the only reason you're looking at it?"

Lacey's question, three years apart, word for word almost. I actually laughed, which surprised both of us.

"No," I said. "That's... no. It's not!"

"Cool." She set her clipboard on a crate. "It'd look better with the silver skirt from the same shoot, they came as a set. Want to see?"

"Wait. You're not... I mean..." I was holding a sequined top to my chest, I couldn't really play it tough. "You're not going to tell anyone?"

"Why would I? Clay, half the design team would kill for your shoulders. Look, do you do this a lot? The trying things on?"

"At home," I admitted. "And in mirrors I shouldn't be near, apparently."

She grinned. Then she got this look, this actual business look, and I want you to know that what happened next was her idea completely, pitched to me like a project proposal, because that detail matters.

"Okay, hear me out. I have a camera I never use. I've been wanting to do a portrait series, just for me, hobby thing, lighting practice. I need a subject who's actually excited about clothes. You've clearly got the interest. What if I'm the director and you're the model? This is separate from work, no strings, and you can say no now or halfway through and nothing changes. Private, after hours like this, nobody else ever sees the photos unless you say so. Or ever, honestly, I don't care about posting them."

"You want to photograph me," I said slowly. "In the sequined top."

"And the silver skirt. And whatever you want to bring, this